Rupiah Closes Stronger on Friday on Back of Trade Balance Surplus

Rupiah Closes Stronger on Friday on Back of Trade Balance Surplus (mataindonesia)

JAKARTA, NNC - Rupiah exchange rate at interbank level in Jakarta at the end of the week strengthened on the back of the trade balance surplus in February 2019.

The rupiah exchange rate on Friday afternoon rose 18 points to IDR14,260 per US dollar from IDR14,278 per US dollar.

"Our trade balance turns out to be a surplus. This is what makes the rupiah strengthen after it has weakened to 14,310," said Monex Investindo Futures Analyst Dini Nurhadi Yashi in Jakarta, Friday (03/15/2019).

In addition, she continued, today the strength of the dollar also tends to fall as the market begins to worry again about American-Chinese trade relations because Trump and Xi Jinping will not meet this March.

"The impact of dollar demand began to fall and began to turn to gold, because today the world gold price tends to rise," said Dini.

Other external sentiments are global markets which tend to be "wait and see" today, despite the absence of important data releases, the Brexit issue is still awaiting clarity. Finally, the British parliament prefers to delay Brexit, so that Brexit will not occur March 29, 2019.

Dini said, on the past two days the market was "insane" with the movement of the pound so that near the close of trading this week it tends to be calmer market movements and used to change the condition of the rupiah.

"So you can say that besides being supported by our surplus trade balance, the market also seems to take advantage of global market conditions that tend to be in low volatility today," she added.

The exchange rate of the rupiah opened early in the morning at IDR14,290 US dollars. Throughout the day, the rupiah moved in the range of Rp. IDR258 per US dollar to Rp. 14,315 per US dollar.

Meanwhile, Bank Indonesia's middle exchange rate on Friday showed that the rupiah weakened to IDR14,310 per US dollar compared to the previous day at IDR14,253 per US dollar.